The shop we are about to visit—perhaps quite the most remarkable in London—stands in a remarkable street, Ratcliff-highway. Ratcliff-highway is not what it was—indeed, its proper name is now St. George's-street, but it still retains much of its old eccentric character. The casual pedestrian who wanders from the neighbourhood of the Mint, past the end of Leman-street and the entrance to the London Dock, need no longer fear robbery with violence; nor may he with any confidence look to witness a skirmish of crimps and foreign sailors with long knives; but, if his taste for observation incline to more tranquil harvest, his eye, quiet or restless, will fall upon many a reminder of the Highway's historic days, and of those relics of its ancient character which still linger. Sailors' boarding-houses are seen in great numbers, often with crossed flags, or a ship in full sail, painted, in a conventional spirit peculiar to the district, upon the windows. Here and there is a slop shop where many dangling oilskins and sou'westers wave in the breeze, and where, as often as not, an old figure-head or the effigy of a naval officer in the uniform of fifty years ago stands as a sign. There are shops where advance notes are changed, and where the windows present a curious medley of foreign bank notes, clay pipes, china tobacco-jars, and sixpenny walking sticks, and there are many swarthy-faced men, with ringed ears, with print shirts and trousers unsupported by braces; also there are many ladies with gigantic feathers in their bonnets, of painful hue, and other ladies who get along very comfortably without any bonnets at all.
In a street like this, every shop is, more or less, an extraordinary one; but no stranger would expect to find in one of them the largest and most varied collection of arms, curiosities, and works of savage and civilised art brought together for trade purposes in the world, and this side by side with a stock of lions, tigers, panthers, elephants, alligators, monkeys, or parrots. Such a shop, however, will be the most interesting object of contemplation to the stray wayfarer through St. George's-street, and this is the shop famed throughout the world as Jamrach's. Everybody, of course, knows Jamrach's by name, and perhaps most know it to be situated somewhere in the waterside neighbourhood of the East-end; but few consider it anything more than an emporium from which the travelling menageries are supplied with stock. This, of course, it is, but it is something besides; and, altogether, one of the most curious and instructive spots which the seeker after the quaint and out-of-the-way may visit is Jamrach's.
The shop, which we find on the left-hand side as we approach it from the west, is a double one, and might easily be taken for two separate establishments. The first window we reach might be passed as that of an ordinary bird fancier's, were the attention not attracted by the unusually neat, clean, and roomy appearance of the cages displayed, and the uncommon shapes and colours of the birds which inhabit them. The next window is more catching to the eye. Furious Japanese figures, squatting Hindoo gods, strange and beautiful marine shells, and curious pottery bring the pedestrian to a stand, and arouse a desire to explore within. All this outside, however, gives small promise of the strange things to be seen and learnt behind the scenes. Returning to the door by the aviary window, we enter, and find ourselves in a bright, clean room, eighteen or twenty feet square, properly warmed by a stove placed in the centre. The walls, from floor to ceiling, are fitted with strong and commodious wire cages, in which birds of wonderful voice and hue and monkeys of grotesque lineament yell, whistle, shriek, and chatter. Great and gorgeous parrots of rare species flutter and scream, and blinking owls screw their heads aside as we pass. But the cause in chief of all this commotion is the presence of an attendant in shirt-sleeves, who, carrying with him a basket, is distributing therefrom certain eatables much coveted hereabout. Beaked heads are thrust between bars, and many a long, brown arm reaches down-ward and forward from the monkey-cages, in perilous proximity to the eager beaks. In a special cage, standing out from the rest, a beautiful black and white lemur sits and stretches his neck to be fondled as the attendant passes, but shyly hides his face when we strangers approach him.
THE AVIARY.
Here Mr. Jamrach himself comes to meet us—a fine old gentleman, whose many years and remarkable experiences have left but small impression upon him. Coming from Hamburg—where his father before him was a trading naturalist—he founded the present business in Shadwell more than fifty years ago, and here he is still in his daily harness, with all the appearance of being quite fit for another half-century of work among snakes and tigers. His two sons—one of whom we shall presently meet—have assisted him in the business all their lives. The elder of these, who was a widely-known naturalist of great personal popularity, died some few years since. Mr. Jamrach takes us into a small, dusty back room, quaint in its shape and quaint in its contents. Arms of every kind which is not an ordinary kind stand in corners, hang on walls, and litter the floors; great two-handed swords of mediæval date and of uncompromisingly English aspect stand amid heaps of Maori clubs, African spears, and Malay kreeses; on the floor lies, open, a deal box filled with rough sheets of tortoise-shell, and upon the walls hang several pictures and bas-reliefs. Mr. Jamrach picks up by a string a dusty piece of metal, flat, three-quarters of an inch thick, and of an odd shape, rather resembling a cheese-cutter. This, we are informed is a bell, or, perhaps more accurately, a gong, and was used on the tower of a Burmese temple to summon the worshippers. Reaching for a short knobkerry, which bears more than one sign of having made things lively on an antipodean skull, Mr. Jamrach strikes the uninviting piece of metal upon the side in such a way as to cause it to spin, and we, for the first time, fully realise what sweet music may lie in a bell. The sound is of the most startling volume—as loud as that of a good-sized church bell, in fact—and dies away very slowly and gradually in a prolonged note of indescribable sweetness. The metal is a peculiar amalgam, silver being the chief ingredient; and oh that all English church bells—and, for that matter, dinner bells—had the beautiful voice of this quaint bit of metal!
A QUEER GONG.